Gammon, Andrea, MA

The Ethics of Ecological Restoration in Cultural Landscapes

Institute for Society, Innovation and Science, Faculty of Science, Radboud University Nijmegen, mailto: [email protected]

Supervisor(s): Prof. H. Zwart, Dr. M. Drenthen and Dr. J. Keulartz

Background

Andrea holds bachelor degrees in Philosophy and Biology (2010, University of Maine, USA) and a M.A. in Philosophy (2013, University of Montana, USA), where she focused on the ethics of climate engineering on a National Science Foundation grant. She grew up in Portland, Maine (USA) and has professional experience outside academia as a copy editor, a biological field researcher, a website manager, and a project coordinator.

Summary

Andrea’s Ph.D. project applies hermeneutic ethics to environmental philosophy, specifically to the conflict over rewilding in cultural settings. Rewilding is a conservation strategy that emphasizes “self-willed” landscapes, that is, landscapes that are managed as little as possible by humans in the aim of removing human influence and presence from them. Of course, in cultural settings, where people live, farm, work, etc., these aims inspire conflict about the role of humans in nature. My dissertation focuses on specific places where rewilding has been proposed and probes the intentions and meanings of both advocates of rewilding and its opponents, who defend cultural landscapes for their historic, aesthetic, and identity-imbuing significance. This dissertation is part of a larger project that develops a hermeneutic environmental ethic by focusing on the landscape as a text that can be read and interpreted, and where environmental conflicts stem from different, incommensurable interpretations.

Publications

Buck, H. J., Gammon, A. R., & Preston, C. J. (2014). Gender and geoengineering. Hypatia 29(3).